A recent five-to-four Supreme Court decision has ruled that evidence obtained from an arrest based on careless record-keeping by the police may be used against a criminal defendant. This ruling revealed differing perceptions of the nearly century-old exclusionary rule that mandates that courts ban evidence that proves that defendants committed crimes with evidence obtained by police actions and procedures that violate constitutional rights.
According to The New York Times, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., writing for the majority, said that the exclusion of evidence should be a last resort and that judges should use a sliding scale in deciding whether particular misconduct by the police warranted suppressing the evidence they had found.
“I feel that Fourth Amendment rights shouldn’t be loosened any more in favor of the police when we already have record numbers in prison,” said senior history major Shepherd Lashley. “The end doesn’t justify the means. The end is we got a bad guy in jail but the means is we went about it in a sketchy way.”
The case in question involved Bennie Dean Herring’s arrest in 2004, which occurred due to the mistaken belief that he was subject to an outstanding warrant. The warrant, which remained in the computerized database, had been withdrawn five months earlier. However, by the time the error was discovered, officers had stopped Mr. Herring, handcuffed him, searched him and his truck and found methamphetamines and an unloaded pistol.
According to a New York Times op-ed piece, this ruling will allow judges to prevent the exclusion of evidence in cases of negligent police conduct going well beyond sloppy record-keeping.
“This ruling is actually quite a consistent interpretation of the Constitution and is not unlike a lot of other cases out there,” said Assistant Professor of Justice and Policy Studies Will Pizio. “It is an extension of the good faith doctrine. If police officers act reasonably within good faith then the evidence will be admitted in court.”
“There are so many checks and balances now in the way that the justice system works that if police misconduct was involved it would be looked at differently,” said Director of Public Safety and former High Point police officer Ron Stowe. “Law enforcement officers are now so in tune with their communities and well trained that they won’t take this court case to say ‘we can do anything.’ It will have very little effect on the day-to-day activities of most law enforcement officers.”
While the ruling may or may not legitimize police misconduct, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s dissenting position noted that the ruling overlooks the importance of preserving a strong incentive to maintain up-to-date and accurate records.
“It certainly legitimizes careless record keeping,” wrote Dean of Students Aaron Fetrow in an e-mail interview. “I teach numerous officers every semester and officers don’t want their cases thrown out of court either. For the most part I believe that the exclusionary rule’s sole purpose of deterring police misconduct is effective and that we should discourage negligent record-keeping by government officials as well.”
“I don’t think that anything will really change based on this court decision because these errors are so rare,” said Pizio. “The justice system functions a lot better than we think.